Australian MMJ Firm Taps NYSE Trader to Chair its Board

An Australian medical marijuana grower with ambitions to go public has tapped a prominent New York stock trader to be the chairman of its board of directors.

RxMM Health, based in Perth, announced on Thursday the appointment of Alan Valdes, vice president of trading at DME Securities, a boutique financial firm in Manhattan.

Valdes has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange for nearly 40 years, and this is not his first marijuana related venture.

In 2012, Valdes joined the board of Diego Pellicer Worldwide, a publicly traded company in Santa Monica, California, that acquires and develops real estate for marijuana growers and retailers. He currently serves as chairman of Diego Pellicer’s board and that of Wall Street Capital Partners, which he runs with Deigo Pellicer’s founder.

RxMM Health is raising money from investors, will have its greenhouses outfitted by midsummer and plans to have its shares publicly traded on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) by the third quarter of this year, the company said in a statement.